Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: GNU Elisp -- Summary Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 89 06:05:43 GMT References: <2211@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <66721@ti-csl.CSNET> <10782@wright.mips.COM> <10788@electron.mips.COM> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 21 >I heard somewhere that RMS started out with Gosling's PD emacs. Gnu Emacs was written from scratch. There are major differences in design between it and Gosling's work. As far as I know, the only exception is that a piece of the display code was based on Gosling's. That code represented a very small part of the total Gnu Emacs. There was reason to believe that certain versions of this code were public domain, so I think RMS had used it in good faith. However enough claims to the contrary were made that he decided to rewrite the relevant code from scratch. Even after that rewrite, there were some remaining similarities. However Unipress (who now have marketing rights to Gosling's code) said they were satisified, and so the issue dropped. (Indeed as far as I know, Unipress hadn't been one of the complainers in the first place.) I should note by the way that Gosling said that his Emacs is not and never was public domain. There were various disputes as to the exact status of various versions and pieces of it. But if you refer to it as PD, you should at least realize that you are making a rather dubious statement. Gnu is of course not public domain either, since it is covered by the somewhat quixotic Gnu public license.